Top 10 Inventions in Money Technology During the 1900's 344
scuggums writes "The DaVinci Institute has put together an interesting historic piece to help put the world of money technology into perspective. While I'm glad to see the ATM machine made the list, I had no idea it was invented back in 1939. Other items on the list are barcodes, spreadsheets, and RSA encryption. This looks to be one of the research pieces the Institute's doing for their upcoming Future of Money Summit in October."
Huh (Score:2, Funny)
wow and automatic teller machine machine, is that used to make ATM's ?
A little tidbit... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ancient Greek Banking (Score:5, Insightful)
International banking goes back to Ancient Greece. The various city-states amounted, in their day, to the equivalent of today's nation-states. They carried on bank-supported trade with each other, and with more distant states such as Egypt.
Your point about banking having its roots in a militant order is well made. Indeed, governments have always reserved for themselves two things: armies and currency.
Re:A little tidbit... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A little tidbit... (Score:2)
Excuse me, but (Score:2, Interesting)
Most of the ones I've seen used are as digital tokens to access computers, enter security doors... Apart from the "credit cards" you can charge up at Kinkos (and I would consider those credit cards, not "smart cards") I've never seen one used that had a big impact on money technology.
Anyone?
Re:Excuse me, but (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Excuse me, but (Score:2, Interesting)
American? (Score:2, Interesting)
Smart cards have been used to pay for stuff like gas in europe since at least 1997. I can't give you a precise date because all i know is i saw them in use when i went to France in '97. No they were not credit or debit cards.
Re:Excuse me, but (Score:5, Informative)
You must be an American--in much of Europe, all of the credit cards are smart cards. When I was in Spain about 3 years ago, I couldn't use my credit card to make pay phone calls because the phones were all equipped with smart card readers and couldn't read my American credit card with only a mag strip.
Re:Excuse me, but (Score:2)
Re:Excuse me, but (Score:2)
You don't "carry it around" on the smart card. It's just an authentication and basic data storage mechanism. But You wouldn't know anything about that going to an ag school (couldn't resist).
Re:Excuse me, but (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Excuse me, but (Score:4, Informative)
I have a chip like that on my PSU ID and despite being only about a year old it sporadically decides not to work.
Stop sporadically sticking it in the slot backwards!
Seriously, I work with smart cards and I find your statement very hard to believe. Unless the contacts on your chip are really filthy and prevent the reader from getting a good connection, the chip will either work or not. I suppose it's possible that some really stupid software on the chip occasionally goes into a bad state (and then somehow recovers???) but given that a chip essentially "reboots" every time it's inserted in a reader, that would have to be some really bad software.
On further reflection, one other possibility does occur to me: If the contact plate has partially broken loose from the chip underneath, it could be that it's only making contact intermittently. I've never seen a chip do this, though; usually if you manage to break the leads, they're broken and will *never* make contact.
In any case, what you're experiencing is very uncommon. I recommend breaking the chip so that it *never* functions and then taking it in and complaining so that they give you a replacement. You can break it pretty easily if you place your thumbnails on the contact plate and crease it sharply. You can also shatter the chip by placing it on a hard surface (concrete works well) and hitting it hard with a hammer.
Re:Excuse me, but (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Excuse me, but (Score:2)
To be fair, I have suspicions that one particular reader in a vending machine in my dorm somehow screwed things up because it seemed to have problems after I attempted to use it on several of the many occasions that the reader malfunctioned. Normally this wouldn'd bother me, but it also affec
Re:Excuse me, but (Score:3, Informative)
The readers that are in vending machines and all other devices that are open to the general public (as opposed to, say, at a checkout counter in a store) hold the card while it is in use so you *can't* remove it early.
Capturing readers are nice.
To be fair, I have suspicions that one particular reader in a vending machine in my dorm somehow screwed things up
I can't see any way a reader could mess up your card... overvoltage, maybe? But that would tend to make the card completely unusable, rather tha
Octopus: Hong Kong smart card - Re:Excuse me, but (Score:5, Interesting)
With the watch/card I can:
--take a bus or minibus from home to the subway station
--get coffee and sandwich at starbucks near the subway station
--ride the subway to the ferry terminal
--stop at 7-11 and buy a magazine
--pay for the ferry to one of many smaller islands
--get a coke from the vending machine at the ferry terminal
--go to the beach at a smaller island, don't worry about my "money" getting wet -- but no, the seafood restaurants and island bars won't take the card...
The card is totally anonymous (or so they tell us). Downsides: it has an upper limit of HK$1000, good for cheap stuff but nothing big, has to be refilled in person for cash, and isn't accepted at many places other than the ones just mentioned. The local McDonald's stopped taking them about a year ago. The Octopus was originally developed by the HK subway system (govt owned, now partially privatized) "from Australian technology" and was then extended to some retailers "near" subway facilities. I have a feeling the banks and bank regulators wouldn't let them go any further -- way too threatening.
The upshot is that, except for the fact that you are required by law to carry your ID, you can basically spend a whole day outside without having to carry a wallet. Now, try to do the same thing in most other countries. Why hasn't anyone rolled this out in the US?
[By the way, the HK govt is now phasing in smart card ID cards -- haven't heard what they plan to do with the info. Big bro has a new toy!]
Re:Excuse me, but (Score:3, Informative)
Smart cards probably have other advantages/disadvantages as well, but that's the only thing I picked up on when I was there.
Smart card? (Score:4, Funny)
So they ignore all the cool 1990's technology that has already had widespread influence and put the Smart Card on the list, which has never amounted to anything...
Re:Smart card? (Score:3, Insightful)
Here we use credit cards. Its more secure to have financial information stored server-side.
Smart cards can be hacked. I should know, I used refill my public telephone calling card back when I lived in Argentina.
Re:Smart card? (Score:2)
Re:Smart card? (Score:5, Informative)
I guess you don't have a checking account. Here in the US it takes one to five days to get checks reconciled. So even if you don't ever use your checkbook. The very fact that you have a checking account puts you at risk from having your account cleaned out.
In some ways, smart cards are just like checks, they don't get reconciled immediately, but they can get reconciled within a few seconds if necessary.
I volunteer (Score:5, Funny)
Historic inventions are nice (Score:4, Interesting)
Just Imagine all the new possibilities for new cominations you can arrange if you combine the latest in technology with the old paper bill.
I'm really looking forward to the bill that makes its possible to track where the bill was, who used it and what was bought. For example, retailers could produce special targeted advertising for peole that came with money they had won in a lottery. If the retailer knows where the customer has grabbed the money its much easier to sell thing based on customer history and public profiles.
A on the security side the government can destroy money that belongs to suspected criminals and therby prevent crime before it takes place. If you don't have cash its difficault to opperate for example a drug ring.
Re:Historic inventions are nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, screw that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing. Where'd that Constitution thingy go anyhow?
-moitz-
Re:Historic inventions are nice (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Historic inventions are nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Historic inventions are nice (Score:2)
So, a proud member of this same party wants to track all the money in everybody's pockets. Tell me, is it easier to get something with a gun, or with cash? Just change your comment to "gun" instead of "mon
Fiat Money (Score:5, Interesting)
Complete Bull (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, the gold standard fell apart because it "fixes" the relationship of one current with respect to another, and the gold acts as a kind of balast to compensate for changes in the relationship. But as you can imagine, this is pretty unstable. Floating currencies, which is what 95% of most currencies are today, automatically compensate by changing exchange rates. Geographic discrepencies are arbitraged away. The system works.
Re:Complete Bull (Score:2, Interesting)
The gold standard "fixes" nothing in any real sense. Gold is a commodity like any other. Its value changes over time depending on the degree to which people want it. The quantity also changes. People still dig the stuff out of the
Re:Complete Bull (Score:5, Insightful)
But let's say the japanese economy tanks, and they their buying power is really only 1 dollar/yen. People who have yen will trade them in (at the nominal rate of 2 dollars/yen) to get 2 dollars, and have thus doubled their real buying power. The BOJ then has to start buying yen with dollars (if they have them) or gold in order to equalize the value. But what happens if they run out of both? That was the trouble under the old system.
That system fell apart, and (even though some new ones were suggested) no replacement was ever implimented. The "chaos" that ensued was basically the best system possible.
Re:Complete Bull (Score:3, Interesting)
Unbacked systems (rather, systems backed with the "full faith and credit" of the issuer) have some very positive aspects.
They can also have some very negative aspects.
There are 3 types of taxes: taxes on trade, taxes on holdings, and taxes on the money supply. The third is very, very dangerous in a system where politicans are at least theoretically accountable to the people, as a tax on the money supply is a subtle death.
Taxes on the money supply are usually levied by increasing the money supply. In i
Re:Complete Bull (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting. I used to work at a precious metal processing company in the UK, who are one of the primary assay makers in europe. Most of the national gold of european countries (at the time particularly the newer, eastern nations) went through us at one time or another for testing, purification and certification. So unless they shipped it from the US to Cambridgeshire and then back again (kind of expensive!) I'd assume it lived i
Re:Complete Bull (Score:2)
Re:Fiat Money (Score:2)
Re:Fiat Money (Score:2)
Realizing the truth of your argument, that there is nothing special about currency backed by gold, and implementing it by letting the dollar and other major currencies float, was surely one of the most remarkable (and remarked on) monetary actions of the 20th Century.
(However, it did cause stock in one bond (movie) to fall.)
Re:Fiat Money (Score:2)
Silver and gold (Score:2, Insightful)
JMR
Never Trust The Client (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Never Trust The Client (Score:3, Interesting)
So does cold hard cash. Instead of a card-reader, the bad guy just needs a knife. Are you saying we shouldn't use cash, because it isn't "secure"?
Smart cards trust the "client", and as any MMORPG developer can tell you, that's a bad thing.
Again, so does cash. All money trusts the 'client' to a certain extent: your bank account has a bi
Re:Never Trust The Client (Score:2)
All this miraculous technology... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:All this miraculous technology... (Score:2)
Ah, ATM (Score:5, Funny)
I think this is an invention that is both terrific and dangerous. I personally have decided to not get an ATM card, reasoning that if my money is harder to get to, it's harder to spend.
Re:Ah, ATM (Score:5, Funny)
Plastic money (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Plastic money (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Plastic money (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing funny is that the USians don't know what we mean. While you guys have pulling out soggy wads of green from your washing machines here in Australia we've been successfully laundering our plastic notes since the 80's.
Re:Plastic money (Score:2, Funny)
Thai money (Score:2)
Re:Plastic money (Score:2)
read here [dfat.gov.au] for more info.
"Australia was the first country in the world to have a complete system of bank notes based on plastic (polymer). These notes provide much greater security against counterfeiting. They also last four times as long as conventional paper (fibrous) notes."
Talk About An Identity Theft Risk! (Score:2, Interesting)
"American Express and MasterCard became huge successes overnight, and by the mid-'70s, Congress had to begin regulation of the credit card industry by banning such practices as the mass mailing of active cards to those who had not requested them."
Re:Talk About An Identity Theft Risk! (Score:3, Interesting)
Anti-Conterfeiting Technology (Score:5, Interesting)
There have also been significant leaps in the technology that is plain old paper currency. e.g. watermarking, plastic bank notes (Australia), holograms, etc.
Would have been nice if they had explored this aspect also. Give me good old-fashioned currency any day.
I don't see ... (Score:5, Funny)
the memory bank (Score:5, Interesting)
Strangely missing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Surely there has been SOMETHING of interest to come from the financial/tech world to be invented in the last 20 years.
From Article (Score:2)
That means it's really small! I think they mean it can't be oversetimated.
Re:From Article (Score:2, Informative)
That means it's really small! I think they mean it can't be oversetimated."
In this instance, the "cannot" does not mean "we are unable to underestimate the social impact", but rather, "The social impact of the credit card should not be under-estimated". In other words, don't under-estimate the social impact....
or something like that. The author used the term correctly.
Re:From Article (Score:2)
Re:From Article (Score:2)
About 50% of the people I talk with think this means twice a week, 50% think it means every two weeks.
The latter are correct. Unfortunately the former use is so common that it has been included in many dictionaries of late.
The interesting thing I've noticed is that there is almost no confusion over semi and bi prefixes for most larger time frames such as month and year/annual
Re:From Article (Score:2)
I always catch this because I remember this Dilbert strip, where Dilbert's like, "Hey, don't underestimate my intelligence." Dogbert responds, "I could never underestimate your intelligence," and Dilbert is satisfied.
Re:From Article (Score:2)
Wish we could get rid of the FED (Score:5, Insightful)
The title says it all. The EURO too while were at it. IMHO, government has no business being in the money business other than punishing people who act fradulently, and holding dishonest people accountable. I'm not saying we should have a gold standard, but something whose value can't be manipulated by government policy. (Yeah, I know the FED technically isn't part of the US govt - but give me a break)
Ignored! (Score:3, Funny)
Yap inflation (Score:3, Informative)
That isn't actually true - there's a smaller island near Yap where the special coins were periodically quarried and rafted back to Yap.
Incidentally, Milton Friedman tells the story of how when Yap was part of the German possessions in the Pacific, the German colonial government once tried to force the Yap Islanders to assist in building infrastructure improvements on their island. The islanders weren't really terribly interested.
gangs (Score:5, Funny)
Gangs had such cooler names back on those days.
Arghhh.... (Score:3, Funny)
What's next:
PIN number?
Contains Windows NT technology?
Just say no to redundancy!
What about paycheck deduction (Score:2)
hmmmm... (Score:2)
The Credit Card - 1950
11 years of "so...what the hell we going to put in it?"
Re:hmmmm... (Score:2)
bonds & futures, etc (Score:2, Informative)
These are integral parts of the whole system in regulating and pr
ATM History (Thank the Dallas Cowboys) (Score:3, Interesting)
Missed one-stock market (Score:2)
No, the money market... (Score:2)
Electronic Cash Registers (Score:4, Informative)
I can remember going to the department store with my mother back in that era. The department store used special models of cash registers that were huge and had many more buttons than a normal cash register. They also had a pneumatic tube system to send paperwork from one department to another.
My List (Score:3, Funny)
9. Tollbooths
8. Pay toilets
7. Collect calls
6. 900 numbers
5. Ponzi
4. Disney dollars
3. The mill
2. Raleigh coupons
And, the greatest monetary technology of the
20th century
1. The 7-cent nickel (Groucho Marx)
Re:ABOLISH MONEY!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
and you sure are a big-M Moron. How can anybody in 2003 want to abolish money?
Money isn't evil, it's just a portable simulation of real trade, just like you send files over the internet instead of having to go see the other guy and give him a diskette. The fact that certain goods or services can be overrated or underrated doesn't change the fact that money was one of the single greatest invention of the human race.
You go trade sacks of grains in the sovkhoz with your fellow idealist friends, while everybody else will takes care of advancing civilization thank you very much.
Re:VisiCalc w/o Apple? (Score:2, Insightful)
Notice they didn't mention the Electric Company, which is what the Electronic Cash Register ran off of.
This Top 10 list is only concerned with finance-specific innovation, not the underlying technology/framework it runs on.
Re:VisiCalc w/o Apple? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:VisiCalc w/o Apple? (Score:5, Informative)
The article states "Electronic Spreadsheet", not specifically VisiCalc.
But since you want to make this a Mac issue... From the article:
<flamesuit class="on">
Wow... the Mac was dying since 1980?
</flamesuit>
Re:VisiCalc w/o Apple? (Score:4, Funny)
Umm.... Electricity wasn't invented. Period.
Re:Pedant (Score:2)
Getting money from a wall (Score:4, Interesting)
Some guy would pretend to be a newly-arrived African immigrant, asking his victim how to "get money from a wall." At that point, his accomplice would show up, pretending to be a stranger, also asking the student to help the poor guy out. The student, taking pity, would go to the ATM, enter their PIN, withdraw X dollars to show them how it's done.
Then, supposedly, the guy 'shows' the student how to keep his wallet safe from thieves, by hiding it in a white bag in his pants, and demonstrates with the students wallet. At which point he gives the student the white bag back, and leaves. Moments later, when the student realizes the white bag he was given doesn't have his wallet, the two guys are nowhere to be found. And usually there was a very recent subsequent cash withdrawl with the student's ATM card.
It was printed in my school paper that about half a dozen people got scammed this way. It was ridiculous, and even more so when I saw the movie "The Sting", where this scam was used exactly.
This brings up some common sense. Firstly and most importantly, does anybody enter their PIN clearly and slowly on the keypad? Especially if there are strangers present? I always block the keypad, and use all 3 fingers to do it so it's entered quickly and discretely. I also can't believe the students gave their wallets to the guy to hold for only a few seconds, and didn't check when he 'gave' it back.
But anyway, it all goes back to your Sumerian "Magic Wall". The phrasing that the thief used to imply his technological innocence and lack of understanding with modern Western society, hence creating a sense of pity in the victim.
Re:Getting money from a wall (Score:2)
No, i mean use the three fingers designed for those numeric keypads. I've gone to countless supermarkets where the cashiers type quickly, but inefficiently, with one finger hopping all over the keypad. Kind of like when I first learned to type I used only my two index fingers on the whole keyboard.
It's a rare sighting when I see someone using a numeric keypad with all three fingers that the keypad was designed for (hence the little bump on the 5 key for cent
Re:TLA acronym abuse (Score:2)
Re:TLA acronym abuse (Score:2)
NIC card
Re:TLA acronym abuse (Score:2)
Re:TLA acronym abuse (Score:2)
Re:TLA acronym abuse (Score:2)
Nathan
Re:TLA acronym abuse (Score:2)
Re:TLA acronym abuse (Score:2)
Re:just a tad c ontridictory (Score:2)
SCO`s Memento (Score:2, Funny)
(Spies IBM)
SCO: "Ohh right, I am suing this guy!....Oh No! He's suing me!!!!!"
Re:Some suggestions (Score:3, Funny)
Bravo!
Clear redundant clarity (Score:2)
Consider "ATM machine" as opposed to "ATM data link" as opposed to "at the moment" abbreviated as opposed to "Adobe Type Manager" as opposed to everything else you find on [acronymfinder.com]. The pedantically redundant phrase "ATM machine" adds clarity.
It's also ironic... (Score:2)
The glorious achievements on this list can nevertheless not negate t